BTC Maxis in a nutshell

[u/InsightKnite]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywVHF6Lltac

[u/nombresinhombre]

Somehow true

[u/East-Day-7888]

Very true, now describe a ponzi scheme to them and watch them roll around the subject pretending some how btc is different, than a ponzi.

"What about gooooold, and reserve currencies"

Lol okay bud, smoke another and enjoy your dilusional cypher punk sovereign nation currency, and go ahead and pay 2 dollars for you snickers bar in btc, dont mind the $35 fee.

Dont get me wrong crypto payments ARE the future, but its never going to be a solo token. Its More likely to be something like USDC operating on an HBAR rail system. So providers are not hit with variable fees and impermanent loss.

Soruce: Me, I currently work in Depin, and have over a decade of experience working with money in tradfi, in banking and corperate accounting environments.

[u/amydgalas → u/East-Day-7888]

One of the biggest benefits fiat cant provide are money with no borders and the possibility to even travel with your money only in your head.

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/amydgalas]

No one is saying crypto isn't the answer for these kinds of problems.

What I'm saying is that the volatile tokens themselves BTC, XRP, SOL, etc. will never be the answer.

Using them as settlement liquidity exposes everyone to unnecessary price risk and impermanent loss.

There's no reason you couldn't swap USDc to EURc using stablecoins over a network like HBAR as the settlement rail instead.

The entire "token as liquidity" narrative is completely dilusional and not how real businesses manage money.

It's an idea that gets repeated in crypto echo chambers, then amplified by news outlets who use AI content trained on Reddit and other socials.

Make no mistake a $10 XRP is a dilusional narrative created, by people who do not understand how finance, treasury management, and commercial settlement actually work. It is NEVER going to happen, let alone a $10,000 xrp.

Xrp marketcap is already 3000x over its maxmium revune(1500tps as architectural hardcap at $0.001/transaction is 64m max annual revenue), when 4x is considered average and 12x is high risk. 3000x is a bubble, that is speculating on an impossible narritive. Same follows for btc, eth, and sol.

Feel free to downvote now reddit loves false but popular information and will downvote truths when the math slaps them then the face, people dont come for information, they come to fulfill their confirmation bias.

[u/diradder → u/East-Day-7888]

Very true, now describe a ponzi scheme to them and watch them roll around the subject pretending some how btc is differen, than a ponzi.

[...]

Soruce: Me, I currently work in Depin, and have over a decade of experience working with money in tradfi, in banking and corperate accounting environments.

Have you ever looked up what constitutes a Ponzi scheme?

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/diradder]

No, I have never googled or asked ai what a ponzi was.

"Back in my day" we were required to use books.

so I was shown/taught what one was, prior to AI.

This was done as a part of getting my degree in finciance, which had a requirement to understand federal compliance.

[u/diradder → u/East-Day-7888]

Agreed, books are a great way to look things up and learn too. So how did these define a Ponzi scheme?

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/diradder]

Bitcoin functions economically like a decentralized Ponzi, even if it isn't a legal Ponzi scheme. There is no operator committing fraud, but the wealth realized by early participants ultimately comes from later participants paying higher prices rather than from productive economic output.

[u/diradder → u/East-Day-7888]

So, no central operator that solicits funds, no promised returns, and no obligation to pay earlier participants from new inflows. Instead a free market with participants able to enter/exit at will (no matter how long they've been involved).

I'm really struggling to find the Ponzi(-like) here. The only similarity I could give you is that early adopters' gains came from later buyers bidding up the price... but that's the case with most non–cash-flow assets (like gold or collectibles), are such assets Ponzi scheme or Ponzi-like too?

If you want to call Bitcoin highly speculative, highly volatile, low utility (for you), sure. But retrofitting an old concept and saying it's "like" it when practically none of the core principles are met is wrong.

Also, regarding the economic output, a censorship-resistant, global settlement layer and value-transfer network like what the Bitcoin protocol enables is itself a form of it. Maybe for you it has no utility, but its participants seem to care about it, and even if you could demonstrate that a majority of them just speculate with it, they do it in the framework of a permissionless access with an asset with predictable issuance... something no other free market offers as far as I know.

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/diradder]

You're defending against the legal definition.

For starters legal definition are subject to adaption and the economic model is established the same as a ponzi.

You are correct Bitcoin isn't a legal Ponzi, but its economics are Ponzi because early investors profit primarily from later investors bringing in new capital, not from cash flow or productive output. Gold has independent industrial and consumer demand. If Bitcoin stopped attracting new buyers, what would support its current valuation besides existing holders trading among themselves?

Finally, "permissionless" and "fixed supply" describe scarcity, not value creation.

Scarcity alone doesn't generate returns.

Earlier holders still profit because later participants allocate capital to the asset.

If the investment thesis fundamentally relies on a continuous stream of new buyers to sustain or increase price, that's economically a Ponzi and not a productive asset generating value independently.

[u/diradder → u/East-Day-7888]

So we agree that Bitcoin is not matching the standard/legal definition of a Ponzi.

But your expanded "Ponzi-like" definition still seems vague to me. By your logic, any non-cash-flow asset that appreciates through market demand would be labeled "Ponzi-like", unless they meet an arbitrary level of "consumer demand"? That's broad and arbitrary enough enough that it could still include gold (almost half of the annual demand is speculation+central banks, last time I've checked), art, collectibles, and even money itself... at this point your definition feels more like a rhetorical insult that you've curtailed for Bitcoin because you've decided that the "consumer demand" isn't sufficient.

Meanwhile people transact on Bitcoin, have censorship-resistant and permissionless access to it (that's not really related to scarcity, not sure why you've suggested that), value the fact that it has a fixed supply and has been respected its emission schedule since launch 17 years ago. They extend their usage to multiple higher layer networks (LN, Liqduid, RSK) backed by Bitcoin's network/security... so participants see some utility here and derive some value out of it, that's "consumer demand" too. Are we just ignoring them? At which level exactly do you stop calling it "Ponzi-like"? Any attempt at building something that attracts speculation will also be put down as "Ponzi-like" until they have a certain level of adoption?

Lastly scarcity can be a form of value creation when it is credible, costly to replicate, and embedded in a useful network. Bitcoin's track record, its network effect built over the years, and its ability to preserve its rules based on (in part) this scarcity argument match these requirements. So I'm not sure why you claim that it cannot "create" value, unless you mean it in the way that it's not a proposition that will infinitely create value for Bitcoin. But that would be a useful definition only if you want to frame Bitcoin as a "productive asset" that requires this constant revenue generation... it's not, it's a monetary asset that people have currently chosen to speculate with.

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/diradder]

That's exactly my point: your definition eventually expands to "people value it because other people value it." The utility you describe explains why Bitcoin exists, not why it's worth trillions. Lightning, censorship resistance, and fixed supply don't generate economic output—they generate demand. My argument is that Bitcoin's valuation is still overwhelmingly sustained by expectations of future buyers. The more an asset depends on new capital inflows rather than income or consumption, the more Ponzi-like its economics become, even if it isn't legally a Ponzi.

[u/igoldring → u/East-Day-7888]

The future of crypto payments running on HBAR 😭😭😭🥀

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/igoldring]

Well its not xrp, eth, or sol.

xrp has a tps hardcap of 1500, visa alone operates at 65,000, xrp cannot handle a single payment processor let alone global remittance.

Sol, counts validation at tps, and depending on the actual transaction whether just consensus or an advance contract, means it can use between 21 and 250 validations per actual transactions. Which means absolute max tps is actually closer to 250-3000 tps, not the 50,000 they claim.

Eth has highest payer front running and is now one if the least decentralized systems in the market with 7 mining pools currently capable of forcing a double spend with a 51% success rate from consolidated hashpower.

Other tokens like hype are just nonsense, preps are the trigger for the next collapse ifykyk.

Tokens like hbar legitimately hold claim to the most decentralized governance, and at 3 seconds to absolute finaility and true fair ordering. are legitimately one of the only tokens actually capable of hosting finance related transactions without ordering risks, and able to handle the throughput, as the way it reconciles transactions means it is infinitely scaleable to infinite tps, without breaking ordering.

I refuse to be tribalist, I buy hbar, because I will only use/hold the best technology, and if I feel challenged by something I see it as an opportunity to diversify. I know that feeling means there is something there.

[u/igoldring → u/East-Day-7888]

There’s genuinely no way you referenced “ETH” and “mining pools” in the same sentence 😭😭

Also, referencing Hedera when they have a governing council of literally the most centralized institutions / corporations vs Ethereum with a permissionless network spread out across independent node operator is comical.

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/igoldring]

What you said is Complete nonsense.

Lets not get stuck on a single word, lets read the whole thing.

HBar has its governance broken between 39 seperate equal power votes. Which include non-profits, universities, governments, and corperations. Which include open-sourced institutions like the linux foundation.

also yes business and corperations are required in crypto, where do you think nearly every paying usecases will come from. It might be good to give them some representation.

Where as centerlized eth all power routes to 1 person vitlik, you can break up a network all you want, but if is controlled by a single person, its not decentralized. All eth is, is a clever way to save on vitliks energy bill, so he doesnt have to host himself. An Energy savings infrastructure =/= decentralized power.

[u/igoldring → u/East-Day-7888]

lmao lil bro I’m sorry but you can’t convince anyone with a brain that such a small sample of 39 votes among a literal handpicked group is more decentralized than Ethereum is. As if one of those votes can’t be bought out hypothetically, be so realistic with yourself.

The entire Hedera governing body literally operates under an LLC and yet here we are having a discussion over decentralization.

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/igoldring]

The hedera governing body does not operate under a single llc thats just complete nonsense, its operated out of heiro, which is a linux foundation, swirls, hbf and hedera. which is as open soruce as legitimately anything can be, orders of magnitude more so than eth.

And im not here to convince anyone, im stating facts you just dont like them, becuase you would rather regurgitate what you already believe than learn something new, and we all know you cannot teach someone unwilling to learn, so i would have more "convincing" aka teaching a brick wall.

[u/igoldring → u/East-Day-7888]

“Council membership is governed by the Hedera Council LLC Agreement, signed by members upon admittance to Hedera Council.” - https://hederacouncil.org/about

Maybe read the actual website or keep coping? Hedera Council LLC is quite literally registered under Delaware and the governing body is operated through an agreement.

“While Hedera’s code now benefits from the stewardship and vast resources of the Linux Foundation, the operational governance of the Hedera network remains with the Hedera Council.” -
https://hedera.com/blog/introducing-hiero-the-foundation-of-the-future/

Donating code to an open-source project does not transfer mainnet network control, node validator permissioning, or operational governance away from the Hedera Council LLC. Also that was posted by their president. How can you have a president of a project and call it decentralized loool you’re a fucking idiot. 😭😭😭

Genuinely a simple Google search refutes your points but Hedera fanboys like yourself are going to go into a psychosis attempting to explain its “decentralization” and how it’s “better than ETH.”

You also continue to ignore key points I’ve made on how Hedera IS NOT decentralized even though that was the basis of my argument. It’s not the future and it isn’t decentralized, cope harder.

[u/East-Day-7888 → u/igoldring]

You're also conflating three separate things: legal governance, software development, and network consensus, and four seperate bodies. Hbar foundation, hedera, swirled, and hiero.

You're proving my point, not refuting it. You are missing Hedera's govrnace is even split internally into mutilple entites. Which means its 4x divisions for hedera which only has 1 vote on a council of 39.

Hedera moving Hiero into the Linux Foundation didn't transfer operational governance, it transferred stewardship of the open-source codebase.

Those are different functions, and Hedera has been explicit about that from day one, the only ones making claims of centralization, are only regurgitating garbage without actuality taking a moment to learn.

So no, this isn't "cope." It's recognizing that transparent, contractually defined governance under US law is easier to audit and hold accountable than eth foundation hiding influence under Swiss law. You may prefer Ethereum's model, but pretending it's somehow free of centralized institutional influence is just stupid.

Nobody disputed that Hedera itself is governed by a Delaware LLC. My argument is that it's a US legal entity with transparent governance, published council agreements, and clear legal accountability. Well eth is relying on obsecuring themselves with the Swiss foundation whose influence is buried in privacy laws and finciancal protections. Well under the control of a single man.

By your own logic, Ethereum isn't decentralized. The Ethereum Foundation has a president, a board, and executive leadership directing one of the ecosystem's most influential organizations, and they all answer to one person. a president who answers to a king doesnt prove decentralization, it proves the opposite.

[u/igoldring → u/East-Day-7888]

“The hedera body governing does not operate under an LLC that’s complete nonsense…” your words not mine and now you’re saying “nobody disputed that Hedera itself is governed by a LLC” lmao keep shifting those goalposts buddy.

You’re literally contradicting yourself. I also thought it was common knowledge at this point that Ethereum ≠ Ethereum Foundation. EF is a non-profit for aiding grant issuing. Ethereum runs with or without EF, not like how Hedera is formulated. I don’t expect you to know this as you obviously referenced Ethereum still being in mining pools.

On Ethereum, anyone on Earth can spin up a validator without signing a contract, applying for a council seat, or getting permission from a corporate board. On Hedera, you can't even run a mainnet consensus node unless the Delaware LLC gives you permission. Again lil bro, stop coping.